Are You Making These Email Marketing Mistakes?

Email marketing is a vital element of any strong marketing strategy. It has proven to be one of the most effective weapons for building relationships with prospects, leads, current customers and even past customers. Email is such an effective marketing tool as it helps you to nurture leads and maintain relationships with customers.

At the heart of every successful email marketing strategy is inbound, content, and account-based marketing. Email marketing allows your customers to receive campaigns related to their wants and needs. It also helps your audience connect with your brand and is a great way to engage and connect with your customers through your shared interest in your products and services.

As important as email marketing is, marketers tend to commit certain common mistakes while creating and executing email marketing strategies. To help you avoid the embarrassment of sending email marketing campaigns full of errors, we’re going to list some common mistakes to avoid.

Common email marketing mistakes  

Sending too many emails

According to Earthweb, the average person receives over 100 emails a day, with the average working professional sending over 40 emails a day. It's no wonder that so many users unsubscribe from companies that bombard their inboxes. If you’re sending emails to your customers every single day or even more, it’s a good idea to reduce this number. A few emails a week is a good rule of thumb, but this will depend on the nature of your business. Use your email reporting tools to try to identify whether people are unsubscribing due to receiving too many emails. You can also have a rule in place through preferences that allow your customers to choose how frequently they receive emails from you.

Poor communication

While sending too many emails to your customers may lead them to unsubscribe, poor communication can also have the same effect. Getting the balance right is essential. Poor communication takes many forms, from grammar and spelling mistakes to lengthy or generic subject lines. Always remember, poor communication not only suggests you don’t care about your customers but also leaves a lasting impression regarding your professionalism and capability.

For more information on why poor communication can be detrimental to your marketing efforts, read our blog post - 7 Reasons Why Poor Online Communication Can Lead to Loss of Sales.

Content

Content is king, and this is just as true for email as it is for other marketing methods. The beauty of email marketing is that it allows you to personalise your email based on your customer's demographics and psychographics. When your subscriber signs up for your newsletter they will provide important information such as age, gender and location. This allows you to engage with your customers based on those demographics. You can also tailor content or send product recommendations, discounts and exclusive offers based on this. Location is also another important factor, especially if you’ve got subscribers from every continent. Content and send time can be personalised to match not only your customer's location but also their needs and wants, which is a win-win. 

Subject Line

It takes a customer a second to glance at an email to decide whether or not they are going to read it. That is why first impressions and subject lines are so important. Is your subject line engaging, relevant and the correct length? These are all questions that need answering to deliver a subject line that makes your customer want to read and find out more. 

Your subject line must be short, clear and concise. The ideal length for a subject line is around 50 characters. Provide value, focus on the topic and be personalised and you’re well on your way to delivering a killer subject line.

Call to actions

One of the most important factors in email is driving the customer to your website and the main way to do this is to add a call to action. You want your customer to take action, this is why a call to action is so important, especially if your end goal is to take your customer to one of the following - a product listing page, a product description page, a blog post or a landing page.

It’s always important to remember that an effective CTA should focus on the customer's needs and wants. The emphasis does not always need to be placed on your product or service. Don’t overwhelm your customers with too many CTAs, instead focus on those that have a clear purpose, are relevant, bring value and help to achieve your campaign's overall goal. 

Neglecting analytics 

Marketers often make the mistake of sending an email and forgetting to analyse its results. Whether it's a stand-alone campaign or followed up by an automated email, it is important to monitor your email marketing KPIs such as open and click rate, engagement and conversion rate.

Gaining a better insight into your email campaign performance will help develop and improve your email marketing strategy. Analysing each campaign will help you pinpoint which content your customers are most interested in. This specific piece of content, whether it be a blog post, landing page or product page - can be built upon and featured in future campaigns due to its popularity and resonance with your target audience.

Mistakes happen. It’s always better to learn from them but they can be prevented to start with. One way to ensure this is to have a plan in place. Map out every single worst-case scenario and ensure you are not sending an email out with mistakes. Important factors to consider and include every time you create a campaign are as follows:

• Subject line

• Content 

• CTAs

• Image size and resolution 

• Send time

• Proofreading

• Previewing and testing

Incorporate these points into your campaign and strategy and you will be well on your way to creating a campaign that your audience will appreciate. Remember to always follow up with analytics to monitor and improve any future campaigns.

If you’re still struggling with where to start and want to deliver the best campaign possible, read our blog post Tips for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign. There you will find all the tips and tricks to produce a successful, open and click-worthy email campaign. 

Even if you have delivered a killer campaign, there’s always room for improvement. If you’re looking to build on your campaigns and need some guidance on how to do this, read our blog post - Email Newsletters: Sending, Perfecting and Analysing.